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(San Francisco, California) A conservative legal
group that regularly fights against LGBT issues is asking the US Supreme Court
to review a lower court ruling involving a student who wore an anti-gay T-shirt
to school.
In April a divided panel of the Ninth Circuit
found that Poway Unified School District had not violated the First Amendment
rights of student Tyler Chase Harper when it kicked him out of class for not
removing the homemade T-shirt that said on the front "Be ashamed, our
school embraced what God has condemned," and on the back
"Homosexuality is shameful".
The teen wore the shirt on the National Day of
Silence in 2004.
Harper, with the help of the Alliance Defense
Fund sued the school and sought an injunction barring Poway from refusing to
allow students to wear clothing with a political or social message.
The panel addressed only the narrow issue of
whether the dress code should be unenforced pending the outcome of the student's
First Amendment suit.
A majority of judges said, however, that Tyler
Chase Harper was unlikely to prevail on claims that the Poway Unified School
District violated his First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and religion
Following the ruling his lawyers appealed for the
full Ninth Circuit to review the case and the panel's ruling.
In
a brief order, the court said that a majority of its judges voted not to
reconsider the case.
Harper was a sophomore at Poway High in 2004 when
he wore the T-shirt to protest the Gay-Straight Alliance held a "Day of
Silence". The year before, the campus was disrupted by protests and
conflicts between students over the Day of Silence.
After Harper refused to take off the T-shirt,
Poway High School's principal kept Harper out of class and assigned him to do
homework in a conference room for the rest of the day. He was not suspended from
school.
The
First Amendment suit has yet to be heard.
But the ADF filed papers with the Supreme Court
on Friday asking the justices to examine the 9th circuit decision.
“The 9th Circuit carved out a new category of protected speech,”
said ADF attorney Tim Chandler. “That has the potential to transform what schools across the country can
do with their speech codes.”
An attorney for the school district said the
request for Supreme Court intervention should wait until the full case is
decided by the lower courts.
©365Gay.com 2006
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